‘From There to Here’

John Oszajca

The debut album from John Oszajca is original. Oszajca is a storyteller by nature and it comes through in his music. He sounds like an American John Wesley Harding — a bit folk singer and a bit pop star.

His best feature is his voice. It is strong without overpowering the music. It often seems as though Oszajca is somewhere just below the surface waiting to explode but doesn’t. His voice is a strong undercurrent that moves the music in just the right direction.

“Back in 1999” opens the album and is one of the stronger songs. It is here that Oszajca begins telling us a story that doesn’t end for 11 tracks. This track came out last summer on the “Mystery Men” soundtrack and at that time it had a prophetic overtone to it that made it good fiction. Listening to this song in the middle of 2000, it has a sense of cynical nostalgia. “Nostradamus, promised us a promise, but it fell through,” he sings

The track is pure folk in spirit, but the use of scratching and sound samples takes it out of that secure genre and elevates it to a new postmodern genre that combines the old and the new with seamless precision.

“Where’s Bob Dylan When You Need Him” appears to be the promising single for this album. It is a slow jam with light canned drums and jangly guitars. It resonates with a kind of forlorn quality that is perpetuated throughout the album. There is a sadness here below the bright lights that is always subdued and masked not with happy denial, but hip, self-assuredness.

“Valley of the Dolls” is inspired by Oszajca’s brief romance with a porno starlet. It has a quiet Mexican horn theme running through it more reminiscent of the old West than the Southern California adult film industry. It is this kind of fusion of ideas and sound that make Oszajca different.

How many other artists could write a song about an old girlfriend who was in porn and not incorporate the obvious, cheesy themes of slap bass and whacka whacka guitar riffs while expressing their disdain rather than: “When you send your message in a bottle, you risk going over the falls.”

Great first album and certainly the beginning of a long line.

4 Stars

—Greg Jerrett